Colors
by Star and neko
Summary: When a mission goes wrong, Duo only has time to send a single coded message. Deciphering it, however, is up to the other pilots.


A/N: There will be another Author's Note at the bottom of this fic, and I strongly encourage everyone to read it, as it will explain some bits I can't give away now. Suffice to say, this fic was written not in any way for the plot (which I honestly don't particularly like...I probably just scared some people off with that admission), but for the odd concept involving Duo that I wanted to work with. And if anyone's curious, all the counting and changing bits took bloody forever. Only warnings I'd tack on here…I sort of probably killed the timeline, but since I can honestly say I never had track of it (or the geography) in the first place, I'm not sure. Implied 1+2 and possibly 3+4; interpret how you want.

I don't own these characters, which is sad because they rock.

Kudos to my lovely beta Allychik6 for making this less of a mess than it was; any current messiness is likely me ignoring her suggestions due to either laziness or personal preference.

Enjoy.

Colors

I had two seconds until I got caught. No time to reset the default coding on my messages; Deathscythe's motion was basically at a standstill and my handy blow-myself-up button was conveniently not working again. Not sure if I was happy about that or not. I hit the last few keys frantically and slammed the 'send' button on the email. I desperately hoped it made it out. And that someone back at base would figure out how to read it while anyone else at this party who might intercept the transmission wouldn't; it was about my only hope for getting out of this…

------------------

Heero frowned as his laptop binged at him. No one should be mailing him now; the last mission had gone to Duo and no new ones were supposed to be available for another week at least.

He slid the laptop to where he could see the screen and clicked into the new message, which conveniently did not have a subject or sender name…and was met by a mass of color. No characters, no letters or numbers, just three lines of little rectangles of color. And the rectangles weren't even of uniform size.

Heero scowled at the screen. There was no way his laptop was malfunctioning. And no one but Doctor J and the other pilots had his email address; he'd long ago rigged his computer to bounce spam mail back to wherever it came from.

He scrolled down the page to see if there was anything lower down. Nothing but the colored blocks. On a hunch, Heero went to his settings and told his setup page to display any and all characters as opposed to the "solely English" setting he had been using. It did nothing, and neither did fiddling around with any other various settings and programs. There were no hidden characters and his computer was not misinterpreting a foreign font; the colors were all that was there.

Staring at the email was getting him nowhere, so Heero decided to go about things in a logical manner. He quickly typed up an email to Doctor J, asking if he'd sent Heero an email recently, saying that if he had it seemed to be corrupted, and hit the send button. The next step involved leaving the room, so Heero shut his laptop and set it down before walking into the hall.

He went down to Wufei's room first, since he knew the Chinese boy was there at the moment, and stopped in the doorway. "Wufei, have you sent any emails recently?"

Wufei looked up from the book he was reading. "No. Why?"

"I just received a very strange email message, and I want to know where it came from."

"You don't know the sender?"

"The email came up completely unreadable, without a sender." Heero bounced his forehead on the doorframe. This was annoying. "If it wasn't you, I'm going to go ask Trowa and Quatre."

"It wasn't me."

Heero turned back around and headed downstairs. Following noises, he found Quatre and Trowa in the kitchen putting together what looked like an elaborate late lunch. Heero personally would have put money on the two of them being very bored prior to their culinary trek, since whatever they were making seemed to be ridiculously complicated and there was basically no empty counter space left in the kitchen.

"Have either of you sent any emails recently?"

Both pilots blinked at Heero. "No," Quatre said as Trowa simply shook his head. "Why?"

"I received an unreadable email and am trying to trace its source."

"You can't get it readable again?" Quatre asked, puzzled.

"No. I think it may have been unreadable in the first place. Either that or the file is corrupted beyond repair." Heero leaned on the doorframe. This had gone from annoying to annoying and frustrating. Either an ally had sent that email, in which case it was probably important, or someone had cracked Heero's computer security, which was seriously worrying. Heero used his computer to receive missions and file reports; if an enemy had access, it could potentially be a disaster. Assuming J came back with a message saying he hadn't sent the email, the only other friendly possibility was Duo, and he was on assignment and should be doing stealth work and damage, not sending mail. Especially not unreadable mail.

Heero turned to look backwards as he heard Wufei come down the stairs behind him. "Barton, Winner, you should check your email accounts. Yuy, if your unreadable email involved a mess of colors, I received it too." Wufei was holding his laptop under his arm.

Everyone just looked at each other for a minute. Then Trowa walked to the sink and rinsed his hands off. Quatre followed. There was a tense silence as the two trotted up the stairs and checked their respective computers. Heero climbed the stairs behind them and went to retrieve his laptop as well; a group meeting might help shed some light on this.

A few minutes and some regrouping later, four puzzled pilots were staring at each other again, this time with laptops open on the living room table. "Who would send all four of us an unreadable email?" Quatre wondered out loud. "And why?"

"We should start with who possibly could send the email," Heero said. "The only people with my address are you three, J, and Duo."

"The same for me, only with O and not J," Wufei said.

"Same with H."

"Same with S."

Heero clicked into a new message in his inbox and scanned it. "It's not one of you three and J just emailed me back saying it wasn't him. That leaves Duo."

Wufei frowned. "He's on assignment. And even Maxwell is not irresponsible enough to risk beaming a joke email in a dangerous situation. If it is from Maxwell, could it be in code?"

Quatre's eyes widened. "Code or a cipher; that's a good possibility. Duo told me once that he'd rigged Deathscythe's output in a way no one but he could ever read, so even if OZ got his suit it would be useless to them. And I've never seen him send email from anything but his laptop. If he was caught, he may have had time to send off a last message to us without having time to change his OS so we could read it."

The worry at the table was palpable. "Duo's mission was meant to be a routine stealth-and-destroy, it's why he was sent alone," Heero reasoned. "It's possible it was a trap, and if so, we have no way of knowing what went wrong or where Duo is. Unless we can decode this." He tapped the screen.

Four pilots looked at each other across the table, and then bent over to start decoding.

Hours later, no progress had been made. Quatre flung his hands up in annoyance. "I can understand that maybe each block is a letter, but why are the blocks different sizes? And why are some of these colors so similar? If Duo wrote this as a code, why not pick either completely different colors, so it's easy to read, or if he wants it hard to read, make _every_ letter a different shade of the same color? This makes_ no sense_!"

"Making no sense is one of Maxwell's general character traits…" Wufei said somewhat tentatively.

"Not like this," Trowa said.

"If he could have given us a clue, he would have." Heero scrolled through the message for what felt like the millionth time. "Either there's a built-in way to decode this, or Duo was so pressed for time that he didn't have time to add one." Heero scowled at the scraps of paper littering the desk next to him. There were scribbles of possible color-to-letter ratios everywhere, along with attempts at finding patterns in the chaos. "Since there seem to be no spaces between words, I'd guess he was out of time."

Heero looked back at the email, his eyes falling on the last line. And this time, something clicked. "I've seen these last three colors before."

"Where?" Trowa asked before anyone else could.

"I'm not sure…no, wait." Heero shoved his chair out and ran up the stairs. He shot back down a minute later, holding a sketchpad. "This is Duo's." He dropped it on the table and flipped it open while the other three pilots shifted so they could see. "On every finished page, this sequence occurs." Heero flipped through the pages of drawings, some of people, some of nature, some of mobile suits and the war, pointing out a small smudge of color hidden on each drawing that looked complete. "It seems to be a signature."

Wufei stared at the book and shook his head. "How did you ever notice that?"

Heero didn't answer and Quatre decided to be diplomatic and change the subject. "It could be a signature; it is three colors, although I don't know why Duo would pick dark blue, grey, and black for his name. They don't seem very…Duo, as far as colors go."

Heero frowned again. Now something else was niggling in the back of his mind, and it took him a minute to place it. "Duo said once, when we first met, that my first name was 'a lot brighter' than his. I never asked him what he meant by that, since at first I didn't care and then later other things were more important."

Wufei looked confused and frustrated. "Again, that makes no sense, unless you wrote your name down with a specific color for each letter."

"And that's exactly what Duo seems to have done here," Heero said. "And based on that comment, it seems to be automatic." He pulled up an internet search engine on his laptop and typed "letters in color" into the search bar, complete with quotation marks. Most of the results were completely useless. Who couldn't figure out how to change the font color in a word processor on their own, anyway? That was just stupid. But one seemed to be a clinical study. Heero clicked on that one and skimmed the page. It was so odd he reread it again. "Synesthesia…"

"Wait, what?" Quatre moved around the table so he was behind Heero and could see the screen, and Wufei and Trowa followed.

"A medical phenomenon that causes overlap in the senses, such as seeing letters and numbers in color, tasting sounds, seeing music, or any other of a number of manifestations," Heero read off.

"So there are people who see letters and numbers in color all the time…Duo must be one of them. This code is the colors, without the letters or numbers." Wufei looked intrigued. "I've never heard of this before…"

"We'd better hope he stuck to just letters," Trowa observed. "If there are numbers in this message too, we'll be in serious trouble."

Heero left the browser page open and flipped back to his email. "We know three letters. That's a starting point. This shade of blue is D, this grey is U, and the black is O." Heero modified an existing program on his computer to translate those three colors, leaving the letters in the original color for reference. Now the screen was mostly incomprehensible blocks of color with a few dotted letters and "duo" at the end.

"Some spacing between words would make this a whole lot easier…" Wufei sighed as he looked at the screen.

Quatre stared at the copy of the email on his laptop. "There are two different heights for the black boxes. Is it possible that there's more than one letter that's the same color?"

Heero went back to the internet and this time just searched "synesthesia". "Yes. It looks like it's common for I and O to be black or white. It also says common letters tend to be common colors and uncommon letters uncommon colors."

"That may explain the different sized boxes, at least for the black; the O box is shorter than the other, so the other could be I. It looks like any other color is a standard height, so it could also have something to do with the shape of the letter represented," Trowa suggested. "I don't know why the width would vary, though."

Heero reprogrammed his computer to change only the one size of black boxes to Os. Then he made several copies of the email and in one changed the other size of black boxes to the letter I. "Things we know for sure: the letters D, U, and O. Some of the letters H, E, and R must be brightly colored." Heero paused to skim more online text. "Unfortunately, that's it. These studies say some colors are more common for certain letters than others, but it isn't in any way definite. I think the next step is to analyze the frequency of each color and cross-reference with the frequency of letters used in the English language. I'm going to keep multiple copies of the email open with different combination possibilities for each."

"We should all try different combinations," Quatre said. "The more possibilities we have going at once, the more likely it is we'll hit on the correct one."

Heero went through and tallied the number of each color in the email. In order of the first appearance of each color, there were 9 solidly red boxes, 14 black Os, 6 sandy colored boxes, 12 bright green boxes, 4 light yellow-orange boxes, 14 bright yellow boxes, 9 light blue boxes, 4 bright blue boxes, 2 grey Us, 7 orangey-red boxes, 3 brown boxes, 7 boxes of a slightly darker yellow, 10 boxes of an odd light grey-blue color, 2 dark ambery-yellow boxes, 2 darker green boxes, 2 blue-black boxes, 5 dark blue Ds, 6 of the other black boxes that might be I, and 2 boxes of red-orange color.

Heero bent to work. The most commonly used letter in the English language is E. The highest number of boxes of one color was 14. There were 14 Us and 14 of the bright yellow boxes. It was highly possible that that yellow was E. It would explain what Duo had meant about Heero's name being a bright color; two Es would do that. Heero programmed the computer to switch all the bright yellows to E.

The next most common letter is T. Heero programmed the bright green to be T. He went on down the line of probability in the same vein, sending his table mates branching into different documents whenever more than one color came up with the same frequency, and came up with…a mass of nothing. Complete gibberish. Obviously some of the more common letters were dead wrong, since any version read something garbled like

noltcessentlmuhwrooltafgeaentsytsrensetden

aeylomisedossctpronfcthrenhrnoagen

soptrioatmtadoaedlooamtheciaihwrwelihhioaduo

Heero considered for a minute. "Straight commonality isn't working. Duo didn't have time to put spaces between words. It's likely he didn't have time for complete sentences either. It's throwing the probabilities off." Groans sounded around the table.

"The most common words that would get left out…definitely "the"," Quatre said. ""The," "A," and connective words like that."

"Probably any and all pronouns as well," Trowa added in.

"Any version of the verb 'to be'," was Wufei's contribution.

"Take out prepositions as well. That will drop the probability of T, H, E, A, I, S, M, O, and R at least." Heero ran his hand over his face. "Given chances of finding those letters in other words…T will drop significantly, as will H and S."

Heero went back to the original document, adding in E and I as before. Then instead of making the green color T, he made it A. Then, still ignoring T, he made the light grey-blue N. He blinked, looking at the screen. There were now two "ion" combinations in the mess. That boded well for being on the right track. In fact, the second "ion" combination read i--ion and the two blank spaces in the middle were the same orangey-red color. Heero being Heero, he used one of his test document versions to make that section read "mission".

Heero made an interested noise and the other three pilots immediately moved so they could see his screen. "That looks like "ambush"." Quatre pointed to a section near the beginning. Heero programmed those letters in, and the word "abandoned" popped out as well in a different location. Heero quickly changed the section in front of "mission" to read "finish the" based on the new added letters.

""Too many"." Wufei pointed at the screen, and T and Y were added to the translation.

""Romafeller"." Trowa indicated the first section.

Based on context, Heero quickly made the last three colors read as G, W, and C, and then sat back to read.

romafellerambushtoomanygeneralwalterleader

newmobiledollfactoryfasterstronger

locationabandonedmoonbasefinishthemissionduo

Heero glared at the screen. "Duo's mission did not involve the moon."

"It does say "ambush"," Trowa said with irony. "And he was ordered to collect data before blowing up the place he infiltrated. It's possible the data he was collecting was on these new dolls."

"This explains what happened to Duo," Quatre said, "but it doesn't necessarily explain where he _is_. It's possible he isn't being held on the moon at all, since that isn't where he was sent, and that's just where the new mobile dolls are being manufactured."

"That may be true," Heero said as he minimized the message document on the screen, "but Duo did give us a name. Which means wherever this General Walter is, that's where Duo is likely to be. A Gundam pilot is too good of a prize to let someone else take credit for."

Heero spent the next fifteen or so minutes hacking Romafeller files through a backdoor he'd left himself at an earlier time until he found what he was looking for. "He's stationed on a satellite close to the moon; that could be the place Duo was ordered to infiltrate and destroy."

"All right then." Quatre took charge. "Assuming Duo is on that satellite, we need two groups, one to get him out and one to attack the base. A group of these new dolls took Duo out, so they're likely to be formidable. The best plan would be to have three of us attack the factory and one sneak in to the satellite to get Duo out."

"I'll go for Duo," Heero said. "That will be the more dangerous mission."

No one protested; Heero was the person best equipped to fight alone, and he was currently glaring hard enough that no one would have disputed him anyway.

"We have a plan, we have a location, and details can be worked out on the way," Quatre said when there were no objections or counter suggestions. "Let's move; it's going to take time to get all of us into space, and we may not have that much time left."

Several hours and hijacked shuttles later, four pilots were in space with a plan. As they got close to their destination, they got in their Gundams and ditched the stolen shuttles, leaving them stopped and drifting, although with their locations marked in case of emergency. Quatre, Trowa, and Wufei split off toward the moon and Heero headed towards the satellite that hopefully had Duo on it.

"Meet back at the safehouse on Earth," Quatre directed over the comm unit. "Waiting in space to meet up without a definite TOA will just leave us as sitting targets."

"Agreed," Heero answered. "Beginning radio silence to avoid chance of detection."

"Be careful." Quatre's face disappeared from his screen.

As he traveled, Heero pulled up the schematics for the satellite and started looking for holes in the sensory array that he could use to slip in without being spotted; nothing shouts "Shoot me now!" quite like a white Gundam in black outer space. It would have been stealthier to sneak in with either a small shuttle or an OZ mobile suit, but in this case serious firepower was likely to be needed in order to get away, so either of those choices would have been impractical for survival.

By the time the satellite came into view, Heero had worked out his angle of approach and quickly maneuvered in close and out of immediate view of cameras and/or windows, hoping anyone who saw him momentarily thought he was just a blip on the radar or their imagination. He spent the entire time mentally cursing; his Gundam was meant to do damage, not be sneaky! That was Duo's job.

…Dammit.

Heero hooked Wing Zero onto the side of the satellite, pulled on his helmet, grabbed a spare spacesuit, and opened his cockpit. It was relatively easy to force the service door open and from there go through the airlock into the satellite itself. Once inside, he found the closest service closet and appropriated both a uniform to throw on over his suit and a rolling basket with linens in it with which to hide the spare suit and his helmet.

Wandering around looking busy gave Heero the opportunity to scope the security out. Judging by the pair of guards in the west corridor, that was the most likely place to find Duo. Unfortunately, his disguise would not get him over there, and the guards were too much older than him for an impersonation of that sort to work.

There was probably a stealthy way to get in, and Duo would probably know it, but Heero decided to just do things his way. He went back to that corridor and started trundling down it.

"Hey, you can't be over here!" When the guards moved to stop him, he shoved the basket towards them, pulled out a gun, and shot them both. The shots were silenced, but that didn't muffle either the first shout or the following thuds as bodies hit the ground.

Working fast, Heero grabbed the helmet and full suit out of the basket and took off down the hall. The first few doors were out of the running because they were the type with locks on the inside for privacy, not the outside to hold in captive Gundam pilots. Heero came to a stop in front of a door that had obviously been modified so the lock _was_ on the outside. "Duo?" he called.

A muffled noise came from inside. Foregoing lockpicking, Heero shot the lock off the door and kicked it open.

Heero found himself growling in anger. The good news was, he'd found Duo. The bad news was, Duo was in no shape to aid in his rescue. He'd fairly obviously been beaten badly, and it looked like other methods of torture had been used as well. Dark bruises and nasty burns were visible around battered clothing, and Duo was sprawled limply across his cot instead of sitting or lying normally.

"Hey…y'f'nd me," Duo managed to croak out around a swollen jaw, split lip, and any other less visible damage.

"Don't talk." Heero got Duo into the spare vacuum suit as gently as he could given injuries and time constraints and then picked him up and got moving. It was a good thing Duo was fairly light and the gravity on the satellite was lower than on Earth, or Heero could have had serious trouble with the extra weight.

"Deathscythe…" Duo muttered.

"I don't know where he is and you can't pilot now. We can come back for him later."

"There they are!" echoed down the hallway.

Heero thanked luck for idiot newbies who shouted inanities when they were trying to catch escaped prisoners as he ducked down a different hallway and broke into a run. Duo gasped as his injuries decided to protest the rough treatment. "Not far," Heero said, turning into a corridor he knew would take him back to the service section he'd come in by.

Heero knew he was cutting it close trying to reach the exit before his pursuers caught up, but he managed to take two twists and turns and double back to the right corridor, so by the time anyone had a clear shot at him and Duo, he had already hauled his helmet on and opened the door to the airlock. He held onto Duo, dove through, and slammed the door shut behind him just as the first bullets went by.

Heero spun to the other side of the airlock and hit the release, coasting out on the decompressing air to grab onto Wing. He deliberately didn't shut the airlock door behind him so no one else could directly follow.

Now came the next fun part. The Gundams weren't built to hold two people. Heero ended up in the pilot's chair with Duo on his lap. Luckily the straps extended far enough to belt both of them down, and Heero took the opportunity to get Duo as immobilized as possible so his injuries wouldn't worsen.

Hitting the thrusters, Heero pulled back off the satellite, and Wing's screens immediately binged to warn of approaching enemies. Not wanting to waste time, Heero leveled his gun and fired at the approaching mobile dolls. His left eye twitched as they all scattered fast enough to avoid the blast. Definitely faster than the usual model.

They were, however, mobile dolls and not suits. Taking the path of expediency, Heero slammed his thrusters back and shot even further away from the satellite, dodging gunfire from the dolls as he went. A few blasts connected, not doing much damage but rocking Wing enough that Duo moaned again. Completely ignoring the dolls as nothing but objects to dodge, Heero again level his blaster, this time at the satellite, and pulled the trigger.

The ensuing explosion knocked back everything in the area, including Wing, and this time Duo simply passed out from the pain. Heero was somewhat thankful for that, since it meant that if he had to do any more radical flying, Duo wouldn't feel it.

For now, at least, they were much safer. Just as Heero'd thought, since the mobile dolls here were being directed from the satellite and nowhere else, as soon as the satellite controls had gone up, all the dolls had stopped moving. Immediate space was now dotted with debris and nonfunctioning mobile dolls, slowly drifting in whatever direction they'd been shoved by their original momentum and the sudden rush of decompressing air from the satellite.

Heero scanned the area for any still functioning enemies and came up blank. Then he frowned. An explosion of that magnitude would have damaged, but not destroyed, a Gundam, and nowhere in the wreckage was anything that looked remotely like a part of Deathscythe. Which made it highly likely that Duo's Gundam had not been here in the first place… Heero decided to ignore that train of thought for the moment; there was nothing he could do about it right now.

Heero turned Wing and took off back in the direction he'd come from. The original plan had involved stealing a convoy off the satellite, but since Heero had, literally, blown that plan to bits, he headed back towards the coordinates of the shuttles he and the others had used to get into space. The only problem with riding the same shuttle back to Earth that he'd taken to space was the threat of recognition if an alert had been placed on the shuttle. It was a greater risk than stealing a new shuttle would have been, but it was still within acceptable parameters.

The satellites were in their original position still, undiscovered and undisturbed, so Heero carefully unbuckled himself and Duo, rebuckled Duo, hooked on his lifeline, and then went outside Wing to open the shuttle hatch. Coming back to pilot Wing in, he didn't bother moving Duo again and just piloted the Gundam in in an awkward crouch in front of the pilot's chair.

Once inside, Heero got out again, closed the shuttle hatch, unhooked his line and Duo, and carried the other boy into the airlock and from there to the shuttle cabin. It was cramped, but there were at least two chairs in the front instead of just the one in Wing. Heero pulled off his helmet and then Duo's and gave the American a cursory check; Duo was pale and his skin was clammy to the touch, but his breathing and pulse were steady.

After the shuttle was set on course back to Earth, Heero dug around in the cabin and came up with the requisite first aid kit. Carefully stripping Duo out of the vacuum suit and doing a full check for injuries revealed a nasty set of bruises, several cracked ribs, a few broken fingers that had given Heero trouble back when he'd had to get the vacuum suit on in the first place, and varied shallow cuts and burn marks. Heero dressed everything as well as he could given a limited amount of bandaging and no burn ointment at all, glad Duo was unconscious while he set the broken fingers. He also made a point of putting some ice on Duo's jaw to reduce the swelling; the day Duo stopped talking when ordered to was the day of the apocalypse, so getting the swelling down sooner rather than later was a good idea.

The trip back to Earth's atmosphere was relatively short. The reentry was a tad more complicated because getting spotted by the military at this point would be a Bad Thing. Heero solved that problem by aiming for a deserted part of the African coastline; even if they were spotted it would take time for any troops to get close to the landing point.

"H'ro?" It figured that Duo would take landing as the time to wake up instead of the nice, simple trip back when there actually would have been time for explanations.

"We're back on Earth, but we need to move before someone gets close enough to this shuttle to actually see us," Heero said while shutting down any and all functions of the ship. He flipped his buckles open and turned to see Duo trying to do the same and failing due to set fingers. "Stop that." Heero undid Duo's straps, picked him again, grabbed the first aid kit, and headed for the cargo hold. While holding Duo, Heero took the chance to check his pupils and judged he did not have a concussion, although he was fairly out of it still, probably due to shock. "You have bruises, cracked ribs, broken fingers, and various other injuries. Hold still and cooperate."

Heero got the both of them up into Wing's cockpit, and then pulled the pain pills out of the first aid kit. "Do you want these?"

"No." Heero didn't force the issue; he hated pain meds too. So he just tossed the kit to the side and strapped himself into the pilot's chair with Duo on his lap. Duo shifted a bit. "H'ro…"

"There isn't that much room." Heero started up the system, pulled the shuttle door open, flipped Wing into ship mode, and took off toward England and the safehouse. Hoping to stop Duo from trying to talk around his damaged jaw as much as possible, Heero decided to try to answer the obvious questions before he asked. "It took us five or so hours working together to decipher your message. Quatre, Trowa, and Wufei went to destroy the factory on the moon. I shot the satellite I found you on, and Deathscythe was not there."

"G't m'bushed l'ving 'ft'r gett'n' th' l'c'tion 'f th' f'ctry."

"Stop trying to talk. The ice helped, but it will be at least several more hours before the swelling goes down completely."

"'K…" Heero blinked. Duo had drifted out of consciousness again. That could be less than good. Or it could just mean his body was taking the "safe" atmosphere as a signal to start healing as quickly as possible. Hard to tell.

It was long dark when, hours later, Heero landed Wing Zero behind the safehouse and carried Duo inside. "You found him!" Quatre came running up, followed at a slower pace by Wufei and Trowa. "We found Deathscythe, but no sign of Duo, so we were worried. Oh my…" Quatre had gotten a good look at Duo.

The next bit involved getting Duo into bed and redressing his more serious injuries now that better supplies were available. In the process, Heero caught sight of a bandage on Wufei's arm and raised an eyebrow. "They were fast," was the only explanation given. Heero dropped it.

All four conscious pilots agreed it would be a good idea if someone was in the room when Duo woke up to prevent any panicking, so a rotating watch was organized. Quatre insisted Heero get some sleep, so Wufei settled in for the first shift while everyone else went to rest now that their biggest worries were taken care of. Duo shifted repeatedly during the night due to his injuries, but he truly woke only once during Trowa's watch long enough to drink some water before falling unconscious again.

In the morning, Duo woke up officially while Heero was on watch. "Ow…" was his first comment, quickly followed by "I can talk now! Ow…"

"The swelling on your jaw has gone down, but shouting is not recommended."

"Think I figured that out," Duo said in a much quieter tone.

Quatre stuck his head in the door. "Heero, do you…" He trailed off when he saw Duo, turned, and hollered "He's awake!" down the hallway. Footsteps up the stairs followed this announcement until all five pilots were in the room, Trowa carrying a breakfast tray in with him. Since Heero had the chair, Wufei sat on the floor, Quatre sat on the edge of the bed, and Trowa leaned against the wall. "How are you feeling?"

"Currently the diagnosis is 'ow,' but since I can talk now, all is good. Uh…could someone help me sit up? I don't want to hurt my hands worse." That sent a few winces around the room while Heero shifted Duo into a sitting position propped up by pillows; no one who depends on piloting heavy machinery and firing a gun for survival wants damaged hands. Once he was up, Trowa set the tray on his lap. "Food! My life is complete." Careful balancing made using a fork possible, although the knife was given up on rather quickly. After the third attempt, Heero confiscated it and did any cutting needed.

"Maxwell, if eating and talking at the same time doesn't strain you ribs, can you explain the mess we just dealt with?" Wufei asked "Most of it seems straightforward, but if nothing else, that code of yours is interesting."

"I think I can manage," Duo said after swallowing his current bite of eggs. "Fair warning that you just gave me free access to talk with my mouth full, though"

Heero snorted. "You can act with manners when you want to."

"Yeah yeah…to start at the beginning, just so I cover everything, my original mission was to sneak onto the satellite Heero got me off of, download some data, get off the satellite, and blow the thing to hell." He paused to eat some. "Security was tighter than it should have been, because instead of being in progress of being built, the mobile doll factory that I was getting data on was finished, and there were lots of the dolls there." Another pause to eat. "When I got off the satellite and back in Deathscythe, I got jumped and wound up in a massive fight. I took a few too many nasty hits, lost mobility, and had just enough time to send off an email before I got hauled in for questioning." Duo paused without eating this time. "That code…easiest way to explain this…um."

"You have synesthesia?" Heero asked.

"Ah. Yes. Aaaand _you_ have an internet connection. That'll make this easier. Since I see letters and numbers in color, and no one else sees exactly the same pairings of each letter or number and each color as I do, I thought it would work pretty well to rig all of Deathscythe's output into fully-color-no-graphemes so only I could read it. It does work; not even G can read anything now without running it through a translator. But I never took into account the fact that I might need to send an email from Deathscythe and not have time to make it readable." Duo stared at his plate for a minute before looking back at his audience and raising an eyebrow. "I'm damned glad you figured it out. How'd you manage?"

"Your signature at the bottom was a starting point, once we decided to treat it as a cipher. It took several hours." Heero did not mention the sketchbook, and the other three pilots decided to go along with him for the moment at least, if for no other reason than they really didn't want to sidetrack the conversation that much.

"It's a good thing you wrote in solely letters," Trowa commented. "If there had been numbers in there too, we would still be trying to work it out now. And that's automatic for you?"

"It is now; I was more used to going the other way at first−y'know, letters to colors, not colors to letters−so it took some getting used to."

"Why did the widths of the colors vary?" Quatre asked.

"It depends on how strong they are in the word they're part of. Capital letters tend to be really strong, and bright letters tend to be stronger than duller ones, but that varies with the word. Some colors change the shades of the colors next to them slightly too."

"So what we dealt with was simple comparatively?" Wufei was startled and very intrigued by this.

"Basically, yeah."

"What color is my name?" Quatre asked, bouncing slightly.

Duo blinked. "Uh…Q is black, U is grey, A is green, T and E are both yellow, and R is red. The yellow and green are dominant, although the black dulls the overall effect some."

"And everyone else?" Still bouncing.

"For Trowa…" Duo nodded in his direction. "Like I said, T is yellow, R is red, and A is green. W is blue-black and O is black. The yellow, red, and green take over. Especially the capital T. Wufei goes blue-black, grey, tan-yellow-orange, yellow, black. Overall I see mostly dull blue-grey-yellow. Heero…H is a warm brown, E is yellow, R is red, O is black. Brown-yellow-red."

"The human mind is an interesting thing…" Wufei had his scholar face on again.

Duo almost shrugged and then realized that would be a bad idea currently. "Well, I can't think of anything else about that to explain, so if there aren't any more questions, back to events." He paused, but no one said anything, just waited expectantly. "The Romafeller guys figured out pretty quick that one, they couldn't use Deathscythe because of the coding, and if I can sidetrack for a second, was he at the moon base?" Duo looked worried.

"Yes," Quatre reassured him. "We brought him back with us, he's in the hanger."

"Oh good. Yeah, and two, they figured out I'd sent off an email−managed to catch it when it bounced off the nearest satellite, apparently−and they couldn't read it. They were trying to get me to give them the key to the code. Since I wouldn't, they tossed me in a locked room and went elsewhere, probably to come up with another plan. Then Heero showed up, and end of story." While everyone thought about what he'd just said, Duo took the opportunity to eat the rest of his food. "The moon base?" He asked.

"Lots of mobile dolls. We all took some bad hits trying to get through the defenses, but we managed it," Trowa said. "The factory is gone; once it was destroyed, all the dolls ceased to function. That seemed to be their weakness, that they were short range only."

Heero nodded. "That's how I got away from the satellite. Once it blew, all enemies went inactive. For a small operation, there are only so many places to give the dolls commands from; no more commands and the dolls stop."

"So basically, problem solved. Yay us." Duo looked down at his bandaged injuries. "Next time I kinda hope I won't have to take this much damage though…I hate broken bones. They take forever to heal, and not being able to move is so _boring_."

The other four pilots looked at each other with wide eyes. Being stuck in a house with a bored Duo for any length of time tended to be dangerous. The next few weeks were likely to be interesting, to say the least.

A/N **READ ME**: Synesthesia exists; it is a documented medical phenomenon involving overlap of the senses, and it is not restricted simply to seeing letters and numbers in color. The colors used above are the ones I, personally, see. Anyone who wants more information can simply google search synesthesia or synaesthesia (same thing, slightly different spelling). Any medical-type info in here is true, and I'd cite if I could. However, I did my research paper on this last year, no longer have access to the database from which I got articles, and am not willing to spend the several hours it would take to go find the same info via google. Google works, but there is more unrelated and redundant stuff to sort through. Not worth the effort since I've already read all the basic info.

R&R would be appreciated since I haven't done this before. A simple "I was here" is sufficient if you have nothing to say, that way I know you took the time to read!


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